Henry VII: The Tax Accountant Who Reinvented the English Monarchy

Henry VII rebuilt England with a ledger instead of a sword. The myth remembers him as a cautious survivor of the Wars of the Roses — a miser, a tax collector, the kind of king who was nervous about the battlefield. But that's the small version of the story. The real machine ran on parchment, bonds, wool customs, royal seals, and the rolls the sheriffs kept. Henry filled his government with "new…